


saudade

by verdenal



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 20:39:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdenal/pseuds/verdenal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Saudade is a Portuguese word that can be translated as "longing, yearning", which describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for something or someone that one loves and which is apart. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return."</p>
            </blockquote>





	saudade

**Author's Note:**

> Written after the s6 finale. The poem used in between sections is e.e. cummings' "i carry your heart with me"

_i carry your heart(i carry it in  
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere  
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done  
by only me is your doing,my darling)_

Dean can feel when Castiel dies, a slow steady curl of pain from his shoulder into his chest, a reverse heart attack. It brings him to his knees and he would pray if there were anything left to pray to. Sam is there, and Bobby, and Death with his sunken face and Dean on his knees, entirely alone. Castiel is dead, and Dean can feel him die.

It had to be done. Castiel was a live wire, a burning bush, a star gone supernova. They could lance the wound and draw those Purgatory souls from him but he would drink them back down. He had an addict’s soul and a lonely heart, bits of Sam and Dean and something ineffably Castiel. Grace of course, but a grace that was Castiel’s entirely, strong and different, different from everything Dean had known and loved.

Dean loved Castiel, and he had known it for years, and it frightened him, and the only thing that frightened him more was knowing that Castiel loved him too, and had perhaps since the beginning. The beginning was different for Castiel, for Castiel it was Dean in the hot arms of Hell, something twisted and stripped and broken. That Castiel had known him down to the marrow and the dark little secrets of his soul and loved him still brings the taste of fear—metal and blood—to Dean’s mouth.

Dean loves Castiel, maybe that is more true. Dean does not think it will ever leave, him, this ache, and he does not know that he wants it to. Pain makes things easier for him to understand, and anyway, Dean has never been able to understand love that isn’t drenched in Winchester blood and knotted to his ribs. Dean loves Castiel like a forest fire, like the sky, like the end of the world. 

_i fear  
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want  
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)  
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant  
and whatever a sun will always sing is you_

Dean has no memory of his resurrection. He remembers Hell before, and the crush of earth afterwards, but not the moment itself. He does not remember Castiel as Castiel, soldier of God and thing unknowable to man, only Cas, watered-down, the drunkard’s angel.

He knows that his soul remembers, because there’s a fucking handprint burned down through his arm and into the very essence of him. It would explain why Dean loves Castiel, loves him through the accountant suit and through Dean’s fear and through the end of the world, because somehow Castiel became the world.

The world has never been kind to Dean. Of course he runs, and runs and when Castiel turns on him it’s the only way out that Dean can find, and because all worlds are unkind, he finds himself on his knees at Castiel’s last, futile stand. There is so much blame to be parceled out and so much of it must be laid on Dean. He is bowed with the weight of his sins. He will not go back to Hell, though, he knows. He cannot go to Hell because there is no Castiel to rescue and repair him, and the point of the Righteous Man in Hell is that he returns to earth. 

Dean will go to Heaven when all is said and done, and he knows his Heaven well.

_here is the deepest secret nobody knows  
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows  
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart_

Dean carries Castiel’s kiss in his most secret places: in the crooks of his elbows and the backs of his teeth, carved down his spine and burrowed deep into his lungs. It is as sure a mark as the handprint, a promise. Of what Dean has never been exactly sure.

They kissed once, after a hunt. There was no occasion, only the soft purr of the engine and the cold blanket of sky stretching over them, and Castiel warm in Dean’s space. Castiel kissed soft and slow, with his fingers clutched like he wanted to anchor himself forever in Dean’s flesh, and when they broke for air it was a comma and not a period; if it ended, it ended for good. Dean could not take Castiel to bed. Sex would burn the press of Castiel’s kiss out of him.

Castiel’s is the love beyond the end, the reward that is Dean’s when everything is over. He doesn’t know if his death is the end, or Castiel’s, or the final triumph of Death over God, but he knows that Castiel’s love is what comes at the end of long darknesses, like he knows the sun will rise and the earth will spin and, coldly, certain, that Castiel is dead.

He knows, too, that Castiel is not returning. There is no second chance because somehow the first was not squandered, and this is the best possible outcome. The dirt beneath his knees is soft, and the sun is warm on the back of his neck. That he can feel warmth at all now is a comfort, and a reminder that though Castiel is gone his kiss is not. 

Dean feels as though there is a hole widening in his chest, and that the earth will swallow him back up, and the seas will cover his grave and no star will ever find it. But along the sweet lines of his veins thrums the kiss, and Dean will live, and Dean will be happy, somehow, and this will never leave him.

And Castiel is dead, but Dean can feel the curling heat of his grace in his chest, and wonders if Death knows he has been undone.

_i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) ___


End file.
